The main body of the Cathedral was completed by 1210, for it is written
in the Latin version (1210) of the _Poem of Miracles_ that one day there
came a shining light which dimmed the candles that were lit, and a
noise as of thunder that drowned the voices of the many faithful praying
in the church, and that a belief sprang up that the Virgin herself had
appeared to honour with her presence the Cathedral built to her
praise.[74]
The north and south porches, which were not part of the original plan,
as is evident from the manner in which they have been applied to the
walls and the buttresses cut away to admit them, would appear to have
been begun in this same year 1210.
But the dedication of the Cathedral was long deferred. It did not take
place till 1260, when S. Louis himself, the devoted benefactor of the
Cathedral, whose personality has filled the north transept, the Rose of
France and the north porch, attended with all his family, and with
multitudes of people from every side, princes and dukes and peasants,
and the bishop, surrounded by his seventy canons, joined in the solemn
dedication of the temple.
By the fire of 1194 the whole of the upper church had been destroyed.
The narthex, with the western porch and its three twelfth-century
windows, alone remained. Beyond the church stood the two towers still,
but their bells and woodwork were all gone, and the masonry was so
charred that traces of the fire may be seen to this day.
Briefly, the steps that were now taken to give us the Cathedral which we
have may be summarised as follows. Four apsidal chapels were added in
the crypt, completing thus the favourite Gothic number of seven; all the
soil of the crypt (except the martyrium) was levelled up to that of
Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre; aisles were constructed over the corridors of
the crypt; a vast transept was added; an enormous choir, with double
aisles and apsidal chapels, was erected over new vaulting of the crypt;
the narthex was displaced and made room for two new bays in the nave;
whilst the west porch was moved skilfully westwards, with the same
object, and set in a line flush with the two towers. Traces of this
latter process will be found in the fact that the three doorways, having
existed before the present nave and aisles, do not now correspond with
them, and traces of what was once exterior masonry of the towers may
also be seen _inside_ the present church, between the Chapel of the
Seven Sorrows and that of the Calvary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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